Title: Get a faster, more secure website: update your PHP today
Author: Alain Schlesser
Published: February 8, 2018

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**Your WordPress site can be faster, and more secure, and you can make this happen!**

This page will explain why this matters to you, and then how you can fix it.

## Why PHP Matters To You

PHP is the coding language WordPress is built on, and its version is set at the 
server-level by your hosting company. Whilst you may be familiar with the importance
of [keeping WordPress, and your themes and plugins up-to-date](https://codex.wordpress.org/Dashboard_Updates_Screen),
keeping PHP up-to-date is just as important.

There are two main benefits to keeping PHP up-to-date:

 * **Your website will be faster** as the latest version of PHP is more efficient.
   Updating to the latest supported version (7.4 or more) can deliver a huge performance
   increase; up to 3 or 4x faster for older versions.
 * **Your website will be more secure**. PHP, like WordPress, is maintained by its
   community. Because PHP is so popular, it is a target for hackers – but the latest
   version will have the latest security features. Older versions of PHP _do not
   have this_, so updating is essential to keep your WordPress site secure.

And then there are a number of secondary benefits:

 * **A faster WordPress website will be rewarded by search engines**, so you’ll 
   rank higher in search!
 * **A faster website will retain visitors better** (they’ll leave if it takes too
   long to load), making your website more effective.
 * **A more secure website is better protected against hackers**, and the cost and
   reputational damage associated with a hacked website.

These benefits are good for you, and good for your website’s visitors. These are
the reasons you should update PHP today. The next section will show you how to do
this.

## Before you update your PHP version

This section starts off with some warnings, but don’t be afraid! As with most things
technical, we just need to cover some background before we can get to the part where
you update your PHP version.

Updating your PHP version should not be a problem, but we can’t _guarantee_ that
it’s not. WordPress itself will work with PHP versions as far back as 5.6 (we’re
recommending version 7.4 or more at the time of writing, so this is _great_ backward
compatibility!), but we don’t know if your themes or plugins will work. They should,
and popular or reputable ones almost certainly will be, but we can’t guarantee it.

There are a couple of steps you should take to mitigate any risk before proceeding:

 1. **Make a backup of your website: **a backup will let you revert your site to how
    it is right now in the event anything goes wrong. There are [plenty of free backup plugins available](https://wordpress.org/plugins/search/backup/),
    so if you don’t have a backup solution already – use one of these. In order to 
    revert this backup, you’ll also need your web host to move your PHP version back
    to your current version (we’ll cover how to do this later).
 2. **Update WordPress, themes, and plugins: **from your WordPress Dashboard, head 
    to Updates, and then update all. You should do this regularly anyway 🙂 When done,
    check your site is working as expected.
 3. **Check PHP compatibility: **install the [PHP Compatibility Checker plugin](https://wordpress.org/plugins/php-compatibility-checker/)
    to check your themes and plugins for possible issues. This plugin isn’t perfect
    and may miss items or flag false positives, but it does work in most cases.
 4. **Fix any PHP compatibility issues: **if the PHP Compatibility Checker plugin picks
    up any issues, get in touch with the theme or plugin developer and ask them to 
    investigate. If they can’t or won’t get back to you, have a look for themes or 
    plugins on [WordPress.org](https://wordpress.org/) with similar functionality and
    use one of these instead.

Run through these steps, and you’ll be ready to update the PHP version on your WordPress
site – and enjoy all of the benefits that come with this!

If you run into any issues whilst doing this or need help, you should contact a 
professional web developer, your hosting company, or your theme and plugins authors.
All of these will be happy to help here.

We can now get on to the final part: actually updating your website’s PHP version.

## How to update your website’s PHP version for a faster, more secure website

You’re now ready to update your website’s PHP version! You’ve done due diligence,
got backups, and are in the best possible shape to do the update.

As the PHP version is set at the server level by your hosting company, updating 
involves either interacting with your host’s settings or asking them to do it.

Thus, exactly _how_ to do the update depends on your hosting company. We’ve asked
hosting companies to submit instructions on how to update your PHP version on their
hosting, and [you’ll find a list of hosts who have instructions available here](https://github.com/WordPress/servehappy-resources/blob/master/tutorials/hosting-specific/tutorials-en.md).

If you can’t find your host on this list, and don’t recognize the names of these
[system-specific and tool-specific update tutorials](https://github.com/WordPress/servehappy-resources),
then email your hosting company and ask them to help! Here’s some template text 
you can use:

    ```wp-block-preformatted
    Dear Hosting Provider,I want my website to be as performant and secure aspossible with the latest version of PHP. For the servermy WordPress site is hosted on, I want to ensure thatis the case. If I am not already on the latest versionof PHP, please let me know what steps I need to taketo update.Thanks!
    ```

If you run into any issues at this stage, either change the PHP version back yourself,
contact your hosting company or a professional web developer. In the unlikely event
something goes wrong and you need to restore your backup, contact your host and 
ask them to restore the previous version of PHP you had running. You can then restore
your backup.

You should now have all the information you need to update! Nice work! With an up-
to-date version of PHP you’ll enjoy a faster, more secure website and happier visitors.

## Faster, more secure WordPress websites for all

Making sure you have the latest version of PHP ensures your website is as fast, 
and secure as possible.

You now have all the information you need to update to the latest version of PHP,
and you know how to update in the future as well. Look out for more PHP update messages
on your WordPress Dashboard going forwards, or keep an eye on your hosting company’s
news for more information.

As a final reminder: contact your hosting company, a professional web developer,
or your theme and/or plugin authors for any additional questions. They’ll all be
able to help out with their areas of expertise.

**Thanks for making the internet a better place!**